This keening soul;
Leto does not know as they stand, cheek to cheek, how he wonders if he can control the tides in her. If she did, she would laugh and dare him to try. If he did she would let her magic loose, let it boil from her every droplet of moisture until she is nothing but ash. It would kill her, yes, but better than than to let any man think he has control over her. Maybe that is another reason why her fate was to drown. It was her choice, her Making carried out within the jaws of a woman…
He has never stood like this with her, with no part of him tense and no part of her tense. They lean in together, like two galaxies bending close, pressing, pressing, pressing. Their joining is the heat of stars and the bruise of planets. The sea bubbles through the windows of worlds and her gaze dips low to peer into the nearest, where a star presses close, where he is something so utterly other. But here, now, they are already something different. Leto does not think, now, upon how he is changed. How he is pressed against her skin in ways he never has before. She does not think of his differences for she is changed too.
Asterion yearns to bitten and to bite. Neither know how the other is changed, not truly. They do not know how they stand pressed together keen to bite to spread, to change the other. Him with disease and her with a feral need to make more kelpies like her.
She laughs, low like the purr of a panther, it trembles between her ribs, sets her bones to rattling. “Then it is your turn to be disappointed,” the priestess says low, amusement turning her voice to satin. Pressed as they are, cheek to cheek, it is easy for her to turn her muzzle to jaw, to trace in ways she had thought of before yet was never truly bold enough to touch. Now, wanton, her lips trail up to the tender space between his jaw and neck. It is warm there, dark, filled with magic and life. The scent of him there is sweet across her tongue. Her lips part, teeth grazing as if to cradle his throat between jaws and teeth. If she does, it is only for a moment as she slowly closes her mouth, teeth grazing over his skin. “It is a gift.” She whispers to him then, still pressed at the juncture of his jaw and neck. “A gift you could never have deprived me of. I have nothing to be angry at you about.”
And then he steps away. Leto tilts her gaze to him, her mane dusted with salt, the bones and bells there chiming as she smiles. It is easier to give in to instinct, she thinks. Easier to slip away from the hurt yet she lets that pain speak now, even through her black-night smile, “Except your leaving. Always leaving.” Finally a small part of her is sad, it is there in her nebular gaze. “I was angry at first,” She says and thinks of a room full of dancers and her, come to draw him back home. “But now it just hurts.” Her eyes close, black lashes pressing upon her cheek - the softest darkest thing about her. “Shame on me for wanting you to stay, not as a king, but as a man.” Her eyes close then as she looks up at the sky, lets the stars sing into her blood. Lets their light fill her mouth, her soul, her heart.
And then he is looking out to sea, with longing and want in his eyes. How can a man who controls it never have sunk into its depths? She studies him as he looks forlornly at the sea. “It is still.” The kelpie whispers and no longer does she let herself be ruled by simple desires and simple feelings. Now she hands herself over to the instinct of sea and stars and Ilati ritual that sings into her bones. “It is dark life and untameable living. The sea demands instinct and respect and love. But you already know that, don’t you?” Leto says still as middle-night as she watches him with her head tilted, her eyes lit by the white of her painted cheeks. “Shall I teach you how to swim, Asterion?”
@Asterion
Anyone! | "speaks" | notes:
